This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams
Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment.”[164]
The peculiar situation of the Pilgrims tended to increase that rugged individuality, that self-confident earnestness, that somewhat dogmatic vigor, which already characterized them, and which is still a salient trait of their descendants. There they stood on a bleak and desolate shore; bereaved of sympathy at home, without friends in the wilderness, “with none to show them kindness or to bid them welcome.” The nearest French settlement was at Port Royal; it was five hundred miles and more of trackless forest to the English plantation of Virginia.[165] The exiles were obliged to be self-centred; cut off from the outer world and isolated, they could entertain no friends but God and each other.
We can hardly be sufficiently thankful for the singular combination of circumstances which produced the Plymouth settlement in 1620. “Had New England been colonized immediately on the discovery of the American continent, the old English institutions would have been planted under the powerful influence of the Roman religion; had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it would have been before activity of the public mind in religion had conducted to a corresponding activity of mind in politics.” God builded better than men knew; and when the time was ripe, he chose “the Pilgrims, Englishmen, Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by misfortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive observation, equal in rank as in rights, bound by no code but that of religion and the public will,”[166] and with these elements He planted a model state, and bade it grow into a democratic, Christian commonwealth, that it might be at once an exemplar and a benefactor to mankind.
The Pilgrims cheerfully accepted peril and discomfort to build such a state. Peace under liberty—sub libertate quietem—this was their aspiration, and they said,
“We ask a shrine for faith and simple prayer,
Freedom’s sweet waters, and untainted air.”[167]
CHAPTER VII.
PIONEER LIFE.
“E’en the best must own,